Okay, this is going to be a long answer. You might
want to read a paragraph at a time, think about
it, and think about how *you* would interpret the
evidence scientifically. Remember that science can
only test things that obey natural laws. People
all over the world have different stories about
where we came from. Almost all of these stories
contain some supernatural force such as one or
more gods or spirits. Science can not be used to
test whether any of these stories is right, or
even which supernatural story is the best. Any
explanation that is scientific has to explain what
we see without using any supernatural
explanations. This doesn't mean anyone else's
story is wrong, it just isn't
science.

Scientists know we didn't actually
evolve from modern monkeys, but the evidence we
have suggests that we have the same ancestor that
they do. There are several lines of evidence that
lead scientists to believe that all forms of life
evolved from only one or a few forms that first
existed about 4 billion years ago. One line of
evidence is fossils. (What is a fossil?)In the
deeper layers of the Earth's crust we find no
fossils. Then we find fossils of simple organisms
in younger layers. As we go up higher in the
rocks, we start finding larger, more complex
organisms along with the simple ones. Sometimes we
see fossils that look like a step between older
fossils and newer ones. As we travel through time
(up the layers of rock), we also see some kinds of
fossils disappear. These types of plants and
animals probably went extinct. The first primates
appeared in the fossil record about 70 million
years ago. (What is a primate?) In rocks that are
about 3 million years old, the first human-like
fossil skeletons were found. They aren't exactly
like ours. They are smaller, and their brains
would have been rather small compared to ours.
They had large canine teeth. In even younger
rocks, there are skulls that are larger and had
bigger brains. Someof these lines went extinct.
The first skeletons that look like us appear in
rocks that are about 200,000 years old.

A
second line of evidence comes from looking at the
bodies of modern animals. If we look at any
primate, we will find exactly the same bones, even
in primates that spend all of their time in the
trees. We have many other similarities, some you
can see on the outside, some are internal, and
some are biochemical. We can use a variety of
tests to see them. For example, if you compare DNA
(what is DNA?), you will find that about 98% of
our DNA code is just like that of chimpanzees. The
other 2% is what makes us different from
them.Anther kind of evidence is developmental.
If we study vertebrates (things with backbones and
skulls) as they change before birth (or hatching)
we see that at the earliest stage, all look the
same. Months before we were born, all of us had
gill slits and tails. These things disappeared as
we developed inside our mothers. This suggests
that our ancestors had a use for these things,
even though we don't need them now. Our
development is not an exact record of our
evolution, but it can give us
clues.

Another bit of evidence is found in
"useless" structures on living adult animals. For
example, some species of snakes and whales have
pelvic and leg bones even though they do not now
have legs that are visible. These bones do not
'do' anything, so it seems likely that they're
'leftovers' from ancestors that had legs. Our own
small fang-like canines don't have any obvious
use, but could be a leftover from the early
primates. Another such structure is the appendix,
which is a "dead end" off your large intestine. In
many animals this is a large structure that is
used to help digest plants (the cecum). In us it
is not only useless, it is dangerous. Many people
die from appendicitis.That is a brief look at
the facts that led scientists to come up with an
evolutionary explanation for where we came from.
While there are many stories of human origin that
include supernatural forces, this is currently the
only scientific one.

Answer 2:

Yes evolution is real.When Darwin, Wallace,
Lamarck and others came up with ideas of evolution
in the 19th century, it was based on observation;
of fossils, of plants and animals in different
parts of the world, of the nature of beaks in
birds ... In effect, evidence for evolution from a
number of different sciences that all tied
together nicely. An then experiments by Mendel on
pea plants confirmed the notion of inheritance,
and today we know that inheritance is through
something called genes. In the more recent past,
it has become rather easy to directly make lab
tests on evolution in viruses, since viruses can
mutate (change their genetic characteristics) very
quickly and these mutations are carried down the
generations, one can actually observe evolution
taking place in the time scale of 5-10 years.

Answer 3:

What do we mean by "Evolution" in modern
conversation? It derives from the Latin
"evolutio", an unrolling. In common usage it is
taken to mean three separate things1. Change
over time - The succession of unique life
assemblages as seen in the fossil record, or the
development of drug-resistant microbes or
pesticide-resistant insects within our own
lifetimes.2. Descent with Modification. That
descendants, while most closely related to their
parents, always differ from them. This is
observable in the fossil record - or in breeding
domesticated animals or plants. Or in the fact
that, of all living organisms you are most similar
to your parents... but you are still
different.3. The Theory of Natural Selection.
Note that the word theory is here used in its
technical sense, that is a hypothesis which has
withstood repeated attempts to dis-prove it. In
short, natural selection is the mechanism that
explains the diversity and history of life most
effectively and which has withstood nearly 150
years of scientific effort to dis-prove it.4.
Numbers 1 and 2 are "facts" that have been
repeatedly observed & have withstood testing
without falsification. Number 3 is a hypothesis
that has withstood 145 years of testing, and is
now considered.

Is evolution "real". Yes.

Answer 4:

We often hear of evolution being called a
"theory." In science, the word theory means
something different than it does in normal
language. Scientists use the word theory to mean
something that can't be proven (or can't be proven
YET), but is otherwise accepted as fact. Evolution
is a theory, but in scientific terms that means
that it's a fact. We say it's a fact that the
Earth revolved around the sun and that everything
is made of atoms, but those are theories, too!
Scientists can't prove that evolution is real only
because there's no way to go back in time and
watch animal populations change over thousands or
millions of years. Scientists have seen animals
change in the laboratory or in the field in ways
that look like evolution inaction, and they have
collected huge amounts of evidence that support
the theory of evolution. In fact, there is no
significant scientific evidence that does not
support evolution, although there are religious
texts that do not mention evolution. (Remember
that not mentioning evolution is different than
saying evolution is not real. Those religious
texts don't mention cars or muscle cells or
Antarctica either, but we now know that those
things are real!)

So the short answer to
your question is that, yes, evolution is real.
There's an excellent story about this very
topic in the November 2004 issue of National
Geographic magazine if you'd like to learn more
about it. Thanks for asking!